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More by Jonathan Kellerman

Jonathan Kellerman A disturbing murder with shocking consequences sets in motion the new book in the number-one best-selling suspense series starring psychologist Alex Delaware and Detective Milo Sturgis.

An affluent family returns home from Sunday dinner only to find the murdered and brutalized corpse of a total stranger in their house. This baffling, twisted tale tests Alex and Milo to their intellectual and emotional limits.

Jonathan Kellerman The number one New York Times best-selling author Jonathan Kellerman's "psychology skills and dark imagination are a potent literary mix" (Los Angeles Times), and this intensely thrilling blend has never been so powerful as in the acclaimed author's new novel of murder and madness among the beautiful dreamers, seductive predators, and doomed innocents adrift in the glare of Southern California's eternal sunshine.

A series of horrifying events occur in quick succession in the same upscale L.A. neighborhood. A backyard renovation unearths an infant's body, buried 60 years ago. And soon thereafter in a nearby park, another disturbingly bizarre discovery is made not far from the body of a young woman shot in the head. Helping LAPD homicide detective Milo Sturgis to link these eerie incidents is brilliant psychologist Alex Delaware. But even the good doctor's vast experience with matters both clinical and criminal might not be enough to cut down to the bone of this chilling case - and draw out the disturbing truth.

Backtracking six decades into the past stirs up tales of a beautiful nurse with a mystery lover, a handsome, wealthy doctor who seems too good to be true, and a hospital with a notorious reputation - all of them long gone, along with any records of a newborn, and destined for anonymity. But the specter of fame rears its head when the case unexpectedly twists in the direction of the highest echelons of celebrity privilege. Entering this sheltered world, Alex little imagines the macabre layer just below the surface - a decadent quagmire of unholy rituals and grisly sacrifice.

Before their work is done, Alex and Milo, "the most original whodunit duo since Watson and Holmes" (Forbes), must confront a fanatically deranged mind of such monstrous cunning that even the most depraved madman would shudder.

Jonathan Kellerman #1
New York Times best-selling author Jonathan Kellerman writes unforgettable tales of crime and detection that expose the shadowy side of glittering Los Angeles. And in
Evidence, readers are once again in the dexterous grip of a master storyteller and stylist equally skilled at teasing your brain and taking your breath away.In the half-built skeleton of a monstrously vulgar mansion in one of L.A.'s toniest neighborhoods, a watchman stumbles on the bodies of a young couple murdered in flagrante and left in a gruesome postmortem embrace. Though he's cracked some of the city's worst slayings, veteran homicide cop Milo Sturgis is still shocked at the grisly sight: a twisted crime that only Milo's killer instincts and psychologist Alex Delaware's keen insights can hope to solve.While the female victim's identity remains a question mark, her companion is ID'd as eco-friendly architect Desmond Backer, who disdains the sort of grandiose superstructure he's found dead in. And the late Mr. Backer, it's revealed was also notorious for his power to seduce women. The rare exception is his ex-boss, Helga Gemein, who's as indifferent to Desmond's death as she apparently was to his advances. Though Milo and Alex place her on their short list of suspects, the deeper they dig for clues the longer the list grows. An elusive prince who appears to harbor decidedly American appetites, an eccentric blueblood with an ax to grind, one of Desmond's restless ex-lovers and her cuckolded husband all are in the homicidal mix spiced with eco-terrorism, arson, blackmail, conspiracy, and a vendetta that runs deep. But when the investigation veers suddenly in a startling direction, it's the investigators who may wind up on the wrong end of a cornered predator's final fury.

Jonathan Kellerman It's a story tailor-made for the nightly news: Dylan Meserve and Michaela Brand, young lovers and fellow acting students, vanish on the way home from a rehearsal. Three days later, the two of them are found in the remote mountains of Malibu, battered and terrified after a harrowing ordeal at the hands of a sadistic abductor. The details of the nightmarish event are shocking and brutal: The couple was carjacked at gunpoint by a masked assailant and subjected to a horrific regimen of confinement, starvation, and assault.

But before long, doubts arise about the couple's story, and as forensic details unfold, the abduction is exposed as a hoax. Charged as criminals themselves, the aspiring actors claim emotional problems, and the court orders psychological evaluation for both.

Michaela is examined by Alex Delaware, who finds that her claims of depression and stress ring true enough. But they don't explain her lies, and Alex is certain that there are hidden layers in this sordid psychodrama that even he hasn't been able to penetrate.

Nevertheless, the case is closed, only to be violently reopened when Michaela is savagely murdered. When the police look for Dylan, they find that he's gone. Is he the killer or a victim himself? Casting their dragnet into the murkiest corners of L.A., Delaware and Sturgis unearth more questions than answers, including a host of eerily identical killings. What really happened to the couple who cried wolf? And what bizarre and brutal epidemic is infecting the city with terror, madness, and sudden, twisted death?

Jonathan Kellerman Masterly storytelling and expert insight into the darkest of human compulsions make number-one New York Times best-selling author Jonathan Kellerman's Alex Delaware novels as compelling as they are addictive. And just when you think he has taken his spellbinding tales of mystery and psychological suspense to the limit, withDeception he takes a bold leap into terrifying and uncharted new territory.

Her name is Elise Freeman, and her chilling cry for help to whoever may be listening comes too late to save her. On a DVD found near her lifeless body, the emotionally and physically battered woman chronicles a year-and-a-half-long ordeal of monstrous abuse at the hands of three sadistic tormentors. But even more shocking than the lurid details is the revelation that the offenders, like their victim, are teachers at one of L.A.s most prestigious prep schools. With Elise now dead by uncertain means, homicide detective Milo Sturgis is assigned to probe the hallowed halls of Windsor Prep Academy. And if ever he could use Dr. Alex Delaware's psychological prowess, its now.

From the get-go, this case promises to be an uphill climb for truth and a down and dirty fight for justice. Allegations of rape, assault, and possibly murder at this esteemed institution renowned for molding Ivy Leaguers make for a social and political time bombespecially given that one of the students has connections high up in City Hall. As the scandal-conscious elite of L.A. close ranks around Windsor Prep, Alex and Milo must penetrate the citadel of wealth and scholarship to expose the hidden anguish, dirty secrets, and deadly sins festering among societys manor-born. But power and position are not easily surrendered, for that's when the best and the brightest turn brutal and ugly. Searching for predators among the privileged, Alex and Milo may well be walking into a highly polished death trap.

Jonathan Kellerman Few know the city of Los Angeles the way number-one best-selling author and acclaimed suspense master Jonathan Kellerman does. His thrilling novels of psychological drama and criminal detection make the capital of dreams a living, breathing character in all its glamour and infamy. That storied history of fame, seduction, scandal, and murder looms large in Mystery, as Alex Delaware finds himself drawn into a twisting, shadowy whodunit that's pure L.A. noir - and vintage Kellerman.

The closing of their favorite romantic rendezvous, the Fauborg Hotel in Beverly Hills, is a sad occasion for longtime patrons Alex Delaware and Robin Castagna. And gathering one last time with their fellow faithful habitués for cocktails in the gracious old venue makes for a bittersweet evening. But even more poignant is a striking young woman - alone and enigmatic among the revelers - waiting in vain in elegant attire and dark glasses that do nothing to conceal her melancholy. Alex can't help wondering what her story is, and whether she's connected to the silent, black-suited bodyguard lingering outside the hotel.

Two days later, Alex has even more to contemplate when police detective Milo Sturgis comes seeking his psychologist comrade's insights about a grisly homicide. To Alex's shock, the brutalized victim is the same beautiful woman whose lonely hours sipping champagne at the Fauborg may have been her last.

But with a mutilated body and no DNA match, she remains as mysterious in death as she seemed in life. And even when a tipster's sordid revelation finally cracks the case open, the dark secrets that spill out could make Alex and Milo's best efforts to close this horrific crime not just impossible but fatal.

Jonathan Kellerman The anonymous caller has an ominous tone and an unnerving message about something "real dead...buried in your marsh." The eco-volunteer on the other end of the phone thinks it's a prank, but when a young woman's body turns up in L.A.'s Bird Marsh preserve, no one's laughing. And when the bones of more victims surface, homicide detective Milo Sturgis realizes the city's under siege to an insidious killer. Milo's first move: calling in psychologist Alex Delaware.The murdered women are prostitutes - except the most recent victim; a brilliant young musician from the East Coast, employed by a wealthy family to tutor a musical prodigy, Selena Bass seems out of place in the marsh's grim tableau.

Conveniently - perhaps ominously - Selena's blueblood employers are nowhere to be found, and their estate's jittery caretaker raises hackles. But Milo's instincts and Alex's insight are too well-honed to settle for easy answers, even given the dark secrets in this troubled man's past. Their investigation unearths disturbing layers - about victims, potential victims, and suspects alike - plunging even deeper into the murky marsh's enigmatic depths.

Bizarre details of the crimes suggest a devilish serial killer prowling L.A.'s gritty streets. But when a new murder deviates from the pattern, derailing a possible profile, Alex and Milo must look beyond the suspicion of madness and consider an even more sinister mind at work. Answers don't come easy, but the darkest of drives and desires may fuel the most devious of foes.

Bones is classic Kellerman - relentlessly peeling back the skin and psyches of its characters and revealing the shadows and sins of the souls beneath. With jolt after jolt of galvanizing suspense, it drives the reader through its twists and turns toward a climax as satisfying as it is shattering.

Jonathan Kellerman After 35 riveting, internationally acclaimed novels of psychological suspense, number-one New York Times best-selling author Jonathan Kellerman returns with his most stunning thriller to date. Killer is a mesmerizing L.A. noir portrayal of the darkest impulses of human nature carried to shocking extremes.

The City of Angels has more than its share of psychopaths, and no one recognizes that more acutely than the brilliant psychologist and police consultant Dr. Alex Delaware. Despite that, Constance Sykes, a sophisticated, successful physician, hardly seems like someone Alex needs to fear. Then, at the behest of the court, he becomes embroiled in a bizarre child custody dispute initiated by Connie against her sister and begins to realize that there is much about the siblings he has failed to comprehend. And when the court battle between the Sykes sisters erupts into cold, calculating murder and a rapidly growing number of victims, Alex knows he’s been snared in a toxic web of pathology.

Nothing would please Alex more than to be free of the ugly spectacle known as Sykes v. Sykes. But then the little girl at the center of the vicious dispute disappears and Alex knows he must work with longtime friend Detective Milo Sturgis, braving an obstacle course of Hollywood washouts, gangbangers, and self-serving jurists in order to save an innocent life.

Killer is Kellerman - and Delaware - at their finest.

Jonathan Kellerman The number one New York Times best-selling author Jonathan Kellerman writes razor-sharp novels that cut to the quick. Now comes Motive, which pits psychologist Alex Delaware and homicide cop Milo Sturgis against a vicious criminal mind - the kind only Kellerman can bring to chilling life.

Even having hundreds of closed cases to his credit can't keep LAPD police lieutenant Milo Sturgis from agonizing over the crimes that don't get solved - and the victims who go without justice. Victims like Katherine Hennepin, a young woman strangled and stabbed in her home. A single suspect with a solid alibi leads to a dead end - one even Alex Delaware's expert insight can't explain. The only thing to do is move on to the next murder case - because there's always a next one.

This time the victim is Ursula Corey: a successful, attractive divorcée who's been gunned down - not a robbery but an execution, a crime that smacks of simple, savage revenge. And along with that theoretical motive come two strong contenders for the role of perp: the dead woman's business partner/ex-husband and her divorce lawyer/secret lover. But just as Alex and Milo think they're zeroing in on the most likely suspect, a bizarre new clue stirs up eerie echoes of the unsolved Hennepin murder. And the discovery of yet another crime scene bearing the same taunting signature raises the specter of a serial killer on a mission, whose twisted method is exceeded only by his manipulative and cunning madness.

Jonathan Kellerman Best-selling author Jonathan Kellerman has been universally hailed as the master of psychological suspense, and the blockbuster new thriller featuring Alex Delaware and Milo Sturgis confirms his status as today's preeminent practitioner of saber-sharp storytelling.

Psychologist Dr. Alex Delaware meets beautiful and emotionally fragile TV actress Zelda Chase when called upon to evaluate her five-year-old son, Ovid. Years later, Alex is unexpectedly reunited with Zelda when she is involuntarily committed after a bizarre psychotic episode. Shortly after Zelda's release, an already sad situation turns tragic when she is discovered dead on the grounds of a palatial Bel Air estate. Having experienced more than enough of LA's dark side to recognize the scent of evil, Alex turns to his friend, LAPD Lieutenant Milo Sturgis, for help in finding out who ended Zelda's broken life.

At the same time, Alex is caught up in another quest: the search for Zelda's missing son. And when other victims vanish from the same upscale neighborhood, worry turns to terror.

As Alex struggles to piece together the brief rise and steep fall of a gorgeous, talented actress, he and Milo unveil shattered dreams, the corruption of a family, and a grotesque betrayal of innocence. With each devastating revelation and damning clue, Alex's brilliant mind is challenged as never before - and his determination grows to see a killer caged and the truth set free.

Jonathan Kellerman Tanya Bigelow was a solemn little girl when Dr. Alex Delaware successfully treated her obsessive-compulsive symptoms. Now, at 19, Patty Bigelow, Tanya's aunt and adoptive mother, has made a deathbed confession of murder and urged the young woman to seek Delaware's help.
Armed with only the vaguest details, Delaware follows a trail twisting from L.A.'s sleaziest low-rent districts to its overblown mansions, retracing Patty and Tanya's nomadic and increasingly puzzling life. Then, a very real murder tears open a terrifying tunnel into the past, where secrets, and bodies, are buried.

Dramatic, action-packed, and filled with psychological detail that only Jonathan Kellerman can provide, Obsession is a whodunit, a whydunit, and something unique: a did-it-ever-happen. This is Kellerman at his heart-racing best.

Jonathan Kellerman Bound by blood but divided by troubles as old as Cain and Abel, Moses Reed and Aaron Fox were first introduced in Kellerman's best-selling
Bones. They are sons of the same strong-willed mother, and their respective fathers were cops, partners, and friends. Their turbulent family history has set them at odds, despite their shared calling. Moses, part Boy Scout, part bulldog, man of few words, is a no-frills LAPD detective. Aaron, sharp dresser and smooth operator, is an ex-cop turned high-end private eye. Usually they go their separate ways. But the disappearance of Caitlin Frostig isn't usual. For Moses, it's an ice-cold mystery he just can't outrun, even with the help of psychologist Alex Delaware and detective Milo Sturgis. For Aaron, it's a billable-hours bonanza from his most lucrative client. Like it or not, Moses and Aaron are in this one together and the rivalry that rules them won't let either man quit till the case is cracked.
A straight-arrow, straight-A student from Malibu, Caitlin has only two men in her life: her sullen single father and her wholesome college sweetheart, who even the battling brothers agree seems too downright upright to be true. Reluctantly tag-teaming in a desperate search for fresh leads, Moses and Aaron zero in on Caitlin's white knight as their primary person of interest, hoping that, like most people in L.A., he has a secret side.

But they uncover more than just a secret as they descend into the sinister, seamy side of the City of Angels after dark, populated by a Hollywood Babylon cast of the glamorous and the damned.

Jonathan Kellerman From the number-one New York Times best-selling creator of the acclaimed Alex Delaware series comes a tour-de-force novel that introduces an unforgettable new heroine and illustrates perfectly why "Jonathan Kellerman has justly earned his reputation as a master of the psychological thriller" (People).

Brilliant, beautiful, and stunningly effective, psychologist Dr. Grace Blades has a special gift for treating troubled souls and healing tormented psyches - perhaps because she bears her own invisible scars. Only five years old when she witnessed her parents die in a bloody murder-suicide, Grace took refuge in her towering intellect and found comfort in the loving couple who adopted her. But as an adult, Grace's accomplished professional life vies with a covert, high-risk dark side, played out harrowingly. And when Grace's two worlds shockingly converge, her past returns with a vengeance.

The crisis begins when the busy therapist encounters a new patient whose own bleak past seems to eerily echo her own grim childhood. But there's a complication: She's met Andrew Toner before, under bizarre circumstances, and must refuse to treat him. Thinking that this is the last she'll hear of the young man, Grace is stunned to learn he was murdered soon after leaving her office, a vicious crime that leads a homicide investigation to her doorstep.

Shaken by the killing and fearing exposure of her double life, Grace sets out to probe the crime herself. But when she stumbles on the dead man's true identity, a horrifying chapter from her childhood is violently reawakened, forcing her to confront a decades-old act of evil that cries out for retribution. Suddenly stalked by vicious predators, Grace must draw upon the fierce will to survive that has powered her entire life while facing down her darkest personal demons.

Jonathan Kellerman A sniper opens fire on a crowded Californian schoolyard but is killed before any children are harmed. When the sniper’s identity is revealed, a media frenzy erupts – why would they want to take innocent lives? Psychologist Alex Delaware is brought in to help the kids cope with the ordeal but is quickly drawn into exploring the motives of the would-be assassin. Alex soon finds himself on a bloody and twisted trail into the world of political extremism from which there may be no way back…

Jonathan Kellerman "I've got a weird one, so naturally I thought of you," says Milo Sturgis, summoning his friend Alex to the trendy gallery where a promising young artist has been brutally garroted on the night of her first major showing. What makes it "a weird one" is the lack of any obvious motive, and the luridly careful staging of the murder scene - which immediately suggests to Alex not an impulsive crime of passion, but the meticulous and taunting modus operandi of a serial killer.
Delaware's suspicion is borne out when he compares notes with Milo's associate, Petra Connor, and her new partner Eric Stahl. The Hollywood cops are investigating the vicious death of Baby Boy Lee, a noted blues guitarist, fatally stabbed after a late-night set at a local club. What links Baby Boy's murder with that of painter Juliet Kipper is the shadowy presence of an abrasive fanzine writer. This alias-shrouded critic's love-the-art/disdain-the-artist philosophy and his morbid fascination with the murders leads Alex and the detectives to suspect they're facing a new breed of celebrity stalker: one with a fetish for snuffing out rising stars.

Tracking down the killer proves to be maddening, with the twisting trail leading from halfway houses to palatial mansions and to the last place Alex ever expected: the doorstep of his ex-lover Robin Castagna. With the rising of Robin's own creative star, her role assumes a chilling new importance - as a prime target for the psychopath who's made cold-blooded murder his chosen art form.

Jonathan Kellerman Alex Delaware and Milo Sturgis investigate the death of Alex's most mysterious patient to date in the sensational new thriller from the master of suspense, New York Times best-selling author Jonathan Kellerman.

At nearly 100 years old, Thalia Mars is a far cry from the patients that child psychologist Alex Delaware normally treats. But the charming, witty woman convinces Alex to meet with her in a suite at the Aventura, a luxury hotel with a checkered history.

What Thalia wants from Alex are answers to unsettling questions - about guilt, patterns of criminal behavior, victim selection. When Alex asks the reason for her morbid fascination, Thalia promises to tell all during their next session. But when he shows up the following morning, he is met with silence: Thalia is dead in her room.

When questions arise about how Thalia perished, Alex and homicide detective Milo Sturgis must peel back the layers of a fascinating but elusive woman's life and embark on one of the most baffling investigations either of them has ever experienced. For Thalia Mars is a victim like no other, an enigma who harbored nearly a century of secrets and whose life and death draw those around her into a vortex of violence.

Heartbreak Hotel is classic Delaware and classic Kellerman.

Jonathan Kellerman In a host of consecutive best sellers, Jonathan Kellerman has kept readers spellbound with the intense, psychologically acute adventures of Dr. Alex Delaware.
Rage offers a powerful new case in point, as Delaware and LAPD homicide detective Milo Sturgis revisit a horrifying crime from the past that has taken on shocking and deadly new dimensions.
Troy Turner and Rand Duchay were barely teenagers when they kidnapped and murdered a younger child. Troy, a remorseless sociopath, died violently behind bars. But the hulking, slow-witted Rand managed to survive his stretch. Now, at age 21, he's emerged a haunted, rootless young man with a pressing need: to talk, once again, with psychologist Alex Delaware. But when the young killer comes to a brutal end, that conversation is silenced forever.

As Delaware and Sturgis retrace their steps through a grisly murder case that devastated a community, they discover a chilling legacy of madness, suicide, and multiple killings left in its wake, and even uglier truths waiting to be unearthed. And the nearer they come to understanding an unspeakable crime, the more harrowingly close they get to unmasking a monster hiding in plain sight.

Rage finds Jonathan Kellerman in phenomenal form, orchestrating a relentlessly suspenseful, devilishly unpredictable plot to a finale as stunning and thought-provoking as it is satisfying.

Jonathan Kellerman Unraveling the madness behind L.A.’s most baffling and brutal homicides is what sleuthing psychologist Alex Delaware does best. And putting the good doctor through his thrilling paces is what mystery fiction’s #1 best-selling master of psychological suspense Jonathan Kellerman does with incomparable brilliance. Kellerman’s universally acclaimed novels blend the addictive rhythms of the classic police procedural with chilling glimpses into the darkest depths of the human condition. For the compelling proof, look no further than Victims - Kellerman at his razor-sharp, harrowing finest.

Not since Jack the Ripper terrorized the London slums has there been such a gruesome crime scene. By all accounts, acid-tongued Vita Berlin hadn’t a friend in the world, but whom did she cross so badly as to end up arranged in such a grotesque tableau? One look at her apartment–turned–charnel house prompts hard-bitten LAPD detective Milo Sturgis to summon his go-to expert in hunting homicidal maniacs, Alex Delaware. But despite his finely honed skills, even Alex is stymied when more slayings occur in the same ghastly fashion... yet with no apparent connection among the victims. And the only clue left behind - a blank page bearing a question mark - seems to be both a menacing taunt and a cry for help from a killer baffled by his own lethal urges.

Under pressure to end the bloody spree and prevent a citywide panic, Milo redoubles his efforts to discover a link between the disparate victims. Meanwhile, Alex navigates the secretive world of mental health treatment, from the sleek office of a Beverly Hills therapist to a shuttered mental institution where he once honed his craft - and where an unholy alliance between the mad and the monstrous may have been sealed in blood. As each jagged piece of the puzzle fits into place, an ever more horrific portrait emerges of a sinister mind at its most unimaginable - and an evil soul at its most unspeakable. “T...

Jonathan Kellerman Unraveling the madness behind L.A.’s most baffling and brutal homicides is what sleuthing psychologist Alex Delaware does best. And putting the good doctor through his thrilling paces is what mystery fiction’s #1 best-selling master of psychological suspense Jonathan Kellerman does with incomparable brilliance. Kellerman’s universally acclaimed novels blend the addictive rhythms of the classic police procedural with chilling glimpses into the darkest depths of the human condition. For the compelling proof, look no further than Victims - Kellerman at his razor-sharp, harrowing finest.

Not since Jack the Ripper terrorized the London slums has there been such a gruesome crime scene. By all accounts, acid-tongued Vita Berlin hadn’t a friend in the world, but whom did she cross so badly as to end up arranged in such a grotesque tableau? One look at her apartment–turned–charnel house prompts hard-bitten LAPD detective Milo Sturgis to summon his go-to expert in hunting homicidal maniacs, Alex Delaware. But despite his finely honed skills, even Alex is stymied when more slayings occur in the same ghastly fashion... yet with no apparent connection among the victims. And the only clue left behind - a blank page bearing a question mark - seems to be both a menacing taunt and a cry for help from a killer baffled by his own lethal urges.

Under pressure to end the bloody spree and prevent a citywide panic, Milo redoubles his efforts to discover a link between the disparate victims. Meanwhile, Alex navigates the secretive world of mental health treatment, from the sleek office of a Beverly Hills therapist to a shuttered mental institution where he once honed his craft - and where an unholy alliance between the mad and the monstrous may have been sealed in blood. As each jagged piece of the puzzle fits into place, an ever more horrific portrait emerges of a sinister mind at its most unimaginable - and an evil soul at its most unspeakable. “This one was different,” Alex observes at the start of the case. This one will haunt his waking life, and his darkest dreams, long after its end.

Jonathan Kellerman Child psychologist Alex Delaware thought he'd put it all behind him - all the tense hours of dealing with disturbed kids and their equally disturbed parents. But he can't resist Melody Quinn. Pathetically skinny with huge, frightened eyes, 7-year-old Melody is the only witness the LAPD has in a grisly double murder.
"Two hours of your time...that's all it will take," says Alex's friend, Detective Milo Sturgis. Delaware quickly finds it's not that simple. What the little girl saw becomes a personal obsession that threatens his career and his life. Snared in a web of evil that stretches from the barrio to an elite island community, he approaches a ghastly secret that makes even murder seem like child's play.

Jonathan Kellerman Few know the city of Los Angeles the way number-one best-selling author and acclaimed suspense master Jonathan Kellerman does. His thrilling novels of psychological drama and criminal detection make the capital of dreams a living, breathing character in all its glamour and infamy. That storied history of fame, seduction, scandal, and murder looms large in Mystery, as Alex Delaware finds himself drawn into a twisting, shadowy whodunit that’s pure L.A. noir—and vintage Kellerman.

The closing of their favorite romantic rendezvous, the Fauborg Hotel in Beverly Hills, is a sad occasion for longtime patrons Alex Delaware and Robin Castagna. And gathering one last time with their fellow faithful habitués for cocktails in the gracious old venue makes for a bittersweet evening. But even more poignant is a striking young woman—alone and enigmatic among the revelers—waiting in vain in elegant attire and dark glasses that do nothing to conceal her melancholy. Alex can’t help wondering what her story is, and whether she’s connected to the silent, black-suited bodyguard lingering outside the hotel.

Two days later, Alex has even more to contemplate when police detective Milo Sturgis comes seeking his psychologist comrade’s insights about a grisly homicide. To Alex’s shock, the brutalized victim is the same beautiful woman whose lonely hours sipping champagne at the Fauborg may have been her last.

But with a mutilated body and no DNA match, she remains as mysterious in death as she seemed in life. And even when a tipster’s sordid revelation finally cracks the case open, the dark secrets that spill out could make Alex and Milo’s best efforts to close this horrific crime not just impossible but fatal.

Jonathan Kellerman & Jesse Kellerman A former star athlete turned coroner's investigator is drawn into a brutal, complicated murder in this psychological thriller from a father-son writing team that delivers "brilliant, page-turning fiction" (Stephen King).

Natural causes or foul play? That's the question Clay Edison must answer each time he examines a body. Figuring out motives and chasing down suspects aren't part of his beat - not until a seemingly open-and-shut case proves to be more than meets his highly trained eye.

Eccentric, reclusive Walter Rennert lies cold at the bottom of his stairs. At first glance the scene looks straightforward: a once-respected psychology professor done in by booze and a bad heart. But his daughter, Tatiana, insists that her father has been murdered, and she persuades Clay to take a closer look at the grim facts of Rennert's life.

What emerges is a history of scandal and violence and an experiment gone horribly wrong that ended in the brutal murder of a coed. Walter Rennert, it appears, was a broken man - and maybe a marked one. And when Clay learns that a colleague of Rennert's died in a nearly identical manner, he begins to question everything in the official record.

All the while, his relationship with Tatiana is evolving into something forbidden. The closer they grow, the more determined he becomes to catch her father's killer - even if he has to overstep his bounds to do it.

The twisting trail Clay follows will lead him into the darkest corners of the human soul. It's his job to listen to the tales the dead tell. But this time he's part of a story that makes his blood run cold.

Jonathan Kellerman Hollywood homicide detective Petra Connor has helped psychologist Alex Delaware crack tough cases in the past. And in Jonathan Kellerman's New York Times best seller Billy Straight, she took the lead in the desperate hunt for a teenage runaway stalked by a vengeful murderer. Now the complex and wryly compassionate Petra is once again at the center of the action, in a novel of cunning twists and page-turning suspense. Lifeless bodies sprawl in a dance-club parking lot after a brutal L.A. drive-by. Of the four seemingly random victims, one stands out: a girl with pink shoes who cannot be identified, and who, days later, remains a Jane Doe. With zero leads and no apparent motive, it's another case destined for the cold file, until Petra decides to follow her instincts and descends into a world of traveling grifters and bloodthirsty killers, pursuing a possible eyewitness whose life is in mortal danger.

Finding her elusive quarry alive isn't all Petra has on her plate: departmental politics threatens to sabotage her case, and her personal life isn't doing much better. If all that wasn't enough, Isaac Gomez, a whiz-kid grad student researching homicide statistics at the station house, is convinced he's stumbled upon a bizarre connection between several unsolved murders. The victims had nothing in common, yet each died by the same method, on the same date, a date that's rapidly approaching again. And that leaves Petra with little time to unravel the twisted logic of a cunning predator who's evaded detection for years, and whose terrible hour is once more at hand.

Jonathan Kellerman & Jesse Kellerman A burned-out L.A. detective...

A woman of mystery who is far more than she seems...

A grotesque, ancient monster bent on a mission of retribution...

When these three collide, a new standard of suspense is born. The legend of the Golem of Prague has endured through the ages, a creature fashioned by a 16th-century rabbi to protect his congregation, now lying dormant in the garret of a synagogue. But the Golem is dormant no longer.

Detective Jacob Lev wakes one morning, dazed and confused: He seems to have picked up a beautiful woman in a bar the night before, but he can't remember anything about the encounter, and before he knows it, she has gone. But this mystery pales in comparison to the one he's about to be called on to solve. Newly reassigned to a Special Projects squad he didn't even know existed, he's sent to a murder scene far up in the hills of Hollywood Division. There is no body, only an unidentified head lying on the floor of a house. Seared into a kitchen counter nearby is a single word: the Hebrew for justice. Detective Lev is about to embark on an odyssey - through Los Angeles, through many parts of the United States, through London and Prague, but most of all, through himself. All that he has believed to be true will be upended - and not only his world, but the world itself, will be changed.

Jonathan Kellerman Hollywood homicide detective Petra Connor has helped psychologist Alex Delaware crack tough cases in the past. And in Jonathan Kellerman's
New York Times best seller
Billy Straight, she took the lead in the desperate hunt for a teenage runaway stalked by a vengeful murderer. Now the complex and wryly compassionate Petra is once again at the center of the action, in a novel of cunning twists and page-turning suspense.
Lifeless bodies sprawl in a dance-club parking lot after a brutal L.A. drive-by. Of the four seemingly random victims, one stands out: a girl with pink shoes who cannot be identified, and who, days later, remains a Jane Doe. With zero leads and no apparent motive, it's another case destined for the cold file, until Petra decides to follow her instincts and descends into a world of traveling grifters and bloodthirsty killers, pursuing a possible eyewitness whose life is in mortal danger.

Finding her elusive quarry alive isn't all Petra has on her plate: departmental politics threatens to sabotage her case, and her personal life isn't doing much better. If all that wasn't enough, Isaac Gomez, a whiz-kid grad student researching homicide statistics at the station house, is convinced he's stumbled upon a bizarre connection between several unsolved murders. The victims had nothing in common, yet each died by the same method, on the same date, a date that's rapidly approaching again. And that leaves Petra with little time to unravel the twisted logic of a cunning predator who's evaded detection for years, and whose terrible hour is once more at hand.

Jonathan Kellerman & Faye Kellerman Husband and wife Jonathan and Faye Kellerman, both internationally best-selling authors, team up for a powerful one-two punch with
Capital Crimes, a pair of original thrillers set in two cities rich in atmosphere. The stories feature appearances by the authors' signature heroes: LAPD Lieutenant Peter Decker and psychologist sleuth Dr. Alex Delaware.
My Sister's Keeper: Berkeley Progressive state representative Davida Grayson fits in well with her Berkeley constituents. But some of Davida's views have made her unpopular elsewhere. Still, no one suspects that any buttons Davida might push could evoke deadly force.

But now Davida lies brutally murdered in her office, and Berkeley homicide detectives Will Barnes and Amanda Isis must unravel Davida's complex, surprising life in order to find her killer.

Music City Breakdown: Nashville Baker Southerby, the son of musicians, was a child-prodigy performer. But something Baker won't talk about leads him to quit the honky-tonk circuit, become a Nashville cop, and never look back. His partner, Lamar Van Gundy, is a would-be studio bassist who never quite made the cut in Music City, and so instead earned himself a detective's badge. Now both men are members of the Nashville PD's elite Murder Squad, with a solid record for solves. But when they catch a homicide that's high-profile even for a city where musical celebrity is routine, their skills are tested. Jack Jeffries, a rock legend who cast aside personal demons and emerged from retirement to perform at a charity benefit, has been discovered in a ditch near the Cumberland River, his throat slashed.

Capital Crimes delivers riveting, psychologically resonant suspense, just what we've come to expect from two of the world's most successful crime writers.

Jonathan Kellerman In his 17 consecutive best selling novels, Jonathan Kellerman has distinguished himself as the master of the psychological thriller. Now, in Kellerman's most compelling and powerful novel yet, L.A. psychologist-detective Alex Delaware confronts a long-unsolved murder of unspeakable brutality - an ice-cold case whose resolution threatens his survival and that of longtime friend, homicide detective Milo Sturgis.The nightmare begins when Alex receives a strange package in the mail with no return address. Inside is an ornate album filled with gruesome crime-scene photos - a homicide scrapbook entitled The Murder Book. Alex can find no reason for anyone to send him this compendium of death, but when Milo views the book, he is immediately shaken by one of the images: a young woman, tortured, strangled, and dumped near a freeway ramp.

This was one of Milo's first cases as a rookie homicide cop: a vicious killing that he and his partner failed to solve because the department closed them down. Being forced to abandon the young victim tormented Milo. But his fears prevented him from pursuing the truth, and over the years he managed to forget.

Now someone has chosen to stir up the past. As Alex and Milo set out to uncover what really happened twenty years ago, their every move is being followed, and their lives are placed in jeopardy. While peeling back layer after layer of ugly secrets, they discover that the murder of one forgotten girl has chilling ramifications that extend far beyond the tragic loss of a single life.

Jonathan Kellerman It is a case unlike any psychologist Dr. Alex Delaware has ever encountered. Five-year-old Woody Swope is ill, but the real problem is his parents. They refuse to agree to the one treatment that could save this boy's life.

Alex sets out to convince Mr. and Mrs. Swope - only to find that the parents have left the hospital and taken their son with them. Worse, the sleazy motel room where the Swopes were staying is empty - except for the ominous bloodstain. The Swopes and their son have vanished into the sordid shadows of the city.

Now Alex and his friend, homocide detective Milo Sturgis, have no choice but to push the law to the breaking point. They've entered an amoral underworld where drugs, dreams, and sex are all for sale...where fantasies are fulfilled at any price - even at the cost of a young boy's life.

Jonathan Kellerman When the phone rings in the middle of the night, child psychologist Alex Delaware does not hesitate. Driving through the dream-lit San Fernando Valley, Alex rushes to Jamey Cadmus, the patient he had failed five years before - and who now calls with a bizarre cry for help. But by the time Alex reaches Canyon Oaks Psychiatric Hospital, Jamey is gone, surfacing a day later in the hands of the police, who believe Jamey is the infamous Lavender Slasher, a psychotic serial killer.

Wooed by a high-powered attorney to build a defense, Alex will get a chance to do what he couldn't five years ago. And when he peers into a family's troubled history and Jamey's brilliant, tormented mind, the psychologist puts himself at the heart of a high-profile case. Because Alex knows that in a realm of money, loss, and madness, something terrible pushed Jamie over the edge - or else someone is getting away with murder.

Jonathan Kellerman When his brief, passionate romance with nurse Jocelyn Banks is cut short by her kidnapping and brutal murder, Dr. Jeremy Carrier is left emotionally devastated, haunted by his lover's grisly demise and warily eyed by police still seeking a prime suspect in the unsolved slaying. To escape the pain, he buries himself in his work as staff psychologist at City Central Hospital, only to be drawn deeper into a waking nightmare when more women turn up murdered in the same gruesome fashion as Jocelyn Banks...and the suspicion surrounding Jeremy intensifies. Now, the only way to prove his innocence and put his torment to rest is to follow the trail of a cunning psychopath.
Spurring on Jeremy's investigation is Dr. Arthur Chess, an enigmatic pathologist who specializes in examining the dead, but harbors a keen fascination with the darker deeds committed by the living. Arthur draws Jeremy into an unexpected friendship, and into the confidence of a cryptic society devoted to matters unknown and unspoken. When he suddenly slips away, Jeremy is left to contend with an onslaught of anonymous clues and the growing realization that a harrowing game of cat and mouse has been set in motion.

But who besides Jeremy is playing? And who is making the rules? Before the killer strikes again, Jeremy races to connect the disturbing puzzle pieces being fed to him. Yet his search for answers only seems to yield more questions. And deepening the mystery is the undeniable presence of someone watching it all, and guiding Jeremy's investigation from behind the scenes. As the game intensifies, Jeremy must decide if a secret ally is setting him on the right path...or a sadistic enemy is setting him up for a fate far beyond even the most twisted imagination.

Jonathan Kellerman The best-selling author of When The Bough Breaks, Blood Test, and Over The Edge delivers the most stunning novel yet, featuring psychologist-detective Dr. Alex Delaware.

At a party for a controversial Los Angeles sex therapist, Alex encounters a face from his own past: Sharon Ransom, an exquisite, alluring lover who left him abruptly more than a decade earlier. Sharon now hints that she desperately needs help, but Alex evades her. The next day she is dead, an apparent suicide. Driven by guilt and sadness, Alex plunges into the maze of Sharon's life - a journey that will take him through the pleasure palaces of California's ultra-rich, into the dark closets of a family's disturbing past, and finally into the alleyways of the mind, where childhood terrors still hold sway.

Also available on BDD Audio Cassette.

Jonathan Kellerman Once again, the depths of the criminal mind and the darkest side of a glittering city fuel number-one
New York Times best-selling author Jonathan Kellerman's brilliant storytelling. And no one conducts a more harrowing and suspenseful manhunt than the modern Sherlock Holmes of the psyche, Dr. Alex Delaware.
A tipsy young woman seeking aid on a desolate highway disappears into the inky black night. A retired schoolteacher is stabbed to death in broad daylight. Two women are butchered after closing time in a small-town beauty parlor. These and other bizarre acts of cruelty and psychopathology are linked only by the killer's use of luxury vehicles and a baffling lack of motive. The ultimate whodunits, these crimes demand the attention of LAPD detective Milo Sturgis and his collaborator on the crime beat, psychologist Alex Delaware.

What begins with a solitary bloodstain in a stolen sedan quickly spirals outward in odd and unexpected directions, leading Delaware and Sturgis from the well-heeled center of L.A. society to its desperate edges, across the paths of commodities brokers and transvestite hookers, and as far away as New York City, where the search thaws out a long-cold case and exposes a grotesque homicidal crusade.

The killer proves to be a fleeting shape-shifter, defying identification, leaving behind dazed witnesses and death - and compelling Alex and Milo to confront the true face of murderous madness.

Jonathan Kellerman The doctors call it Munchausen by proxy, the terrifying disease that causes parents to induce illness in their own children. Now, in his most frightening case, Dr. Alex Delaware may have to prove that a child's own mother or father is making her sick.

Twenty-one-month-old Cassie Jones is bright, energetic, the picture of health. Yet her parents rush her to the emergency room night after night with medical symptoms no doctor can explain. Cassie's parents seem sympathetic and deeply concerned. Her favorite nurse is a model of devotion. Yet when child psychologist Alex Delaware is called in to investigate, instinct tells him that one of them may be a monster.

Then a physician at the hospital is brutally murdered. A shadowy death is revealed. And Alex and his friend LAPD detective Milo Sturgis have only hours to uncover the link between these shocking events and the fate of an innocent child.

Jonathan Kellerman Psychologist Dr. Alex Delaware confronts a killer who takes as much pleasure in matching wits with the police as in taking lives. A diplomat's retarded daughter is murdered on a school field trip. The girl's father denies the possibility of a political motive, leaving LAPD detective Milo Sturgis and his longtime friend, Alex Delaware, stymied. When another killing occurs, Alex finds himself ensnared in one of the most menacing cases of his career. The psychologist ultimately goes undercover to expose the smug brutality of a deadly conspiracy in Jonathan Kellerman's chilling portrait of evil.

Jonathan Kellerman The best-selling author of
When The Bough Breaks,
Blood Test, and
Over The Edge delivers the most stunning novel yet, featuring psychologist-detective Dr. Alex Delaware. At a party for a controversial Los Angeles sex therapist, Alex encounters a face from his own past - Sharon Ransom, an exquisite, alluring lover who left him abruptly more than a decade earlier. Sharon now hints that she desperately needs help, but Alex evades her. The next day she is dead, an apparent suicide.
Driven by guilt and sadness, Alex plunges into the maze of Sharon's life - a journey that will take him through the pleasure palaces of California's ultra-rich, into the dark closets of a family's disturbing past, and finally into the alleyways of the mind, where childhood terrors still hold sway.

Jonathan Kellerman In the first Alex Delaware novel, Dr. Morton Handler practiced a strange brand of psychiatry. Among his specialties were fraud, extortion, and sexual manipulation. Handler paid for his sins when he was brutally murdered in his luxurious Pacific Palisades apartment. The police have no leads, but they do have one possible witness: seven-year-old Melody Quinn.

It's psychologist Dr. Alex Delaware's job to try to unlock the terrible secret buried in Melody's memory. But as the sinister shadows in the girl's mind begin to take shape, Alex discovers that the mystery touches a shocking incident in his own past.

This connection is only the beginning, a single link in a 40-year-old conspiracy. And behind it lies an unspeakable evil that Alex Delaware must expose before it claims another innocent victim: Melody Quinn.

Jonathan Kellerman Number-one
New York Times best-selling author Jonathan Kellerman writes unforgettable tales of crime and detection that expose the shadowy side of glittering Los Angeles. And in
Evidence, listeners are once again in the dexterous grip of a master storyteller and stylist equally skilled at teasing your brain and taking your breath away.
In the half-built skeleton of a monstrously vulgar mansion in one of L.A.'s toniest neighborhoods, a watchman stumbles on the bodies of a young couple - murdered in flagrante and left in a gruesome postmortem embrace. Though he's cracked some of the city's worst slayings, veteran homicide cop Milo Sturgis is still shocked at the grisly sight: a twisted crime that only Milo's killer instincts - and psychologist Alex Delaware's keen insights - can hope to solve.

While the female victim's identity remains a question mark, her companion is ID'd as eco-friendly architect Desmond Backer, who disdains the sort of grandiose superstructure he's found dead in. And the late Mr. Backer, it's revealed, was also notorious for his power to seduce women.

The rare exception is his ex-boss, Helga Gemein, who's as indifferent to Desmond's death as she apparently was to his advances. Though Milo and Alex place her on their short list of suspects, the deeper they dig for clues the longer the list grows. An elusive prince who appears to harbor decidedly American appetites, an eccentric blueblood with an ax to grind, one of Desmond's restless ex-lovers and her cuckolded husband - all are in the homicidal mix spiced with eco-terrorism, arson, blackmail, conspiracy, and a vendetta that runs deep.

But when the investigation veers suddenly in a startling direction, it's the investigators who may wind up on the wrong end of a cornered predator's final fury.

Jonathan Kellerman "Been a while since I had me a nice little whodunit," homicide detective Milo Sturgis tells Alex Delaware. But there's definitely nothing nice about the brutal tableau behind the yellow crime-scene tape. On a lonely lover's lane in the hills of Los Angeles, a young couple lies murdered in a car. Each bears a single gunshot wound to the head. The female victim has also been impaled by a metal spike. And that savage stroke of psychopathic fury tells Milo this case will call for more than standard police procedure. As he explains to Delaware, "Now we're veering into your territory."
It is dark territory, indeed. The dead woman remains unidentified and seemingly unknown to everyone. But her companion has a name: Gavin Quick, and his troubled past eventually landed him on a therapist's couch. It's there, on familiar turf, that Delaware hopes to find vital clues. And that means going head-to-head with Dr. Mary Lou Koppel, a popular celebrity psychologist who fiercely guards the privacy of her clients...dead or alive.

But when there's another gruesomely familiar murder, Delaware surmises that his investigation has struck a nerve. As he trolls the twisted wreckage of Quick's tormented last days, what he finds isn't madness, but the cold-blooded method behind it. And as he follows a chain of greed, corruption, and betrayal snaking hideously through the profession he thought he knew, he'll discover territory where even he never dreamed of treading.

As provocative as it is suspenseful, Therapy is premier Kellerman that finds the award-winning author firing on all creative cylinders and carrying readers on an electrifying ride to a place only he can take them, for an experience they won't soon forget.

Jonathan Kellerman Three months ago, Hope Devane was found stabbed to death on a quiet, shady street in one of L.A.'s safest neighborhoods. The police have found no clues to her murder. Now Detective Milo Sturgis, newly assigned to the case, turns to his psychologist friend, Dr. Alex Delaware, looking for insights into Hope's life. She was a psychology professor and controversial author of a pop-psych best seller, an angry indictment of men. Both Milo and Alex believe Hope's murder to be an execution fueled by hate.
They discover why as they unlock one by one, the very private compartments of her life: her marriage, her shadowy work for a Beverly Hills clinic, the Conduct Committee she ran with an iron hand at the University, and her baffling link to another murder victim. But it is when Alex delves into her childhood that he begins to understand the formidable woman that she was, and the ties that entangled her life until the horrifying act of betrayal that ended it.

Building to a white-knuckle climax in which Alex sets a trap for the killer, The Clinic is brilliantly plotted suspense as wrenchingly disturbing as today's headlines.

Jonathan Kellerman When the slightly retarded 15-year-old daughter of a diplomat is murdered in cold blood on a school field trip in the Santa Monica Mountains, her father adamantly denies the possibility of a political motive. The Los Angeles Police Department's Detective Milo Sturgis and his longtime friend, psychologist Alex Delaware, pose the question: Why?The victim's father is so intent on controlling the investigation that Alex and Milo start to wonder if he wants to bring out the truth or make sure it stays buried. Then there is another killing, and within days Alex finds himself ensnared in one of the darkest, most menacing cases of his career. An obsessed killer, who takes as much pleasure in matching wits with the police as in robbing human life, all in the name of science, is still on the loose.

Driven to find answers, Alex and Milo work closely with Inspector Daniel Sharavi, the brilliant Israeli police detective. In the end, though, it is Alex who will go undercover, alone, to expose the smug brutality of a murderous conspiracy and a terrifying contempt for human life. In Survival of the Fittest, Jonathan Kellerman draws one of the most chilling, frighteningly realistic portraits of evil you will ever listen to.

Jonathan Kellerman For three months, the police find no clues in the stabbing death of Hope Devane, the author of a pop-psychology best-seller. So they turn to Dr. Alex Delaware to study the case for insights that might point to a killer.As Alex unlocks the private compartments of Hope's life, the murder looks calculated and vengeful. A study of her childhood reveals that she kept secrets from everyone. It also helps Alex set a trap for the killer.

Jonathan Kellerman Alex Delaware is back! And in Jonathan Kellerman's riveting and ingenious new novel, Monster, he faces one of the most grisly and baffling mysteries of his career: How can a nonfunctional psychotic locked up in a supposedly secure institution for homicidal madmen predict brutal murders in the outside world? Delaware and his friend and partner, Detective Milo Sturgis, must penetrate this enigma in order to stop the horrific killings.

A marginal actor is found dead in a car trunk, sawn in half. Months later, a psychologist at a hospital for the criminally insane is discovered murdered and mutilated in a tantalizingly similar way. When reports of an inmate's incoherent ramblings begin to make frightening sense as predictions of yet more slayings, Delaware and Sturgis are drawn into a web of family secrets, vengeance, and manipulation - both inside the asylum and on the streets of L.A., where death, drugs, and sex are marketed as commodities. The climactic discovery they make as they race to prevent more killings gives fresh and terrifying meaning to the concept of monstrosity.

With Monster's incomparably deft characterizations and dazzlingly dark plot twists, Jonathan Kellerman further enhances his literary position as master of the psychological thriller.

Jonathan Kellerman Who killed the killer?

In his brilliant and startling novel, Jonathan Kellerman, perennial best-selling author and premier proprietor of the psychological thriller, gives a sharp and timely twist to homicide's central question.

Someone has murdered euthanasia champion Dr. Eldon Mate - a self-styled Dr. Death responsible for scores of assisted suicides. In a burst of bloody irony, the killer chooses to dispatch the doctor in the back of Mate's own suicide van, hooking him up to the killing apparatus dubbed "the Humanitron" - and adding some butchering touches of his own. The case is assigned to veteran LAPD homicide detective Milo Sturgis, who turns once again to his friend Dr. Alex Delaware. But working this case raises a conflict of interest for Alex so profound that he can't even discuss it with Milo. The tension that develops between cop and psychologist further complicates an already baffling and complex murder investigation - one whose suspects include the families of Dr. Mate's "travelers", Mate's own son, and a psychopathic killer who relishes the geometry of death.

Dr. Death is a rich brew of unforgettable characters, labyrinthine plotting, pause-resisting prose, and the unique insights into the darkest corners of the human mind that have earned Jonathan Kellerman international accolades as the master of psychological suspense.

Jonathan Kellerman Edgar Award winner Jonathan Kellerman once more explores the corruption of California's golden coast and produces a novel of complex characterizations and nonstop suspense. By the time psychologist Dr. Alex Delaware reached the school the damage was done: A sniper had opened fire on a crowded playground, but was gunned down before any children were hurt. While the TV news crews feasted on the scene and Alex began his therapy sessions with the traumatized children, he couldn't escape the image of a slight teenager clutching an oversized rifle. What was the identity behind the name and face: a would-be assassin, or just another victim beneath an indifferent California sky?

Intrigued by a request from the sniper's father to conduct a "psychological autopsy" of his child, Alex begins to uncover a strange pattern of innocence, neglect, and loss. Then suddenly it is more than a pattern - it is a trail of blood. In the dead sniper's past was a dark and vicious plot. And in Alex Delaware's future is the stuff of grown-up nightmares: the face of real human evil.

Jonathan Kellerman A new patient, 24-year-old Lucy Lowell, has come to the semi-retired psychologist Alex Delaware, straight from the jury of a serial killer's grisly trial. The trial was harrowing enough, but now it's triggered a recurring and haunting dream in which Lucy, as a little girl, watches a gang of men bury a young woman's body in the woods.Dr. Delaware hopes to find the creepy dream's origin through hypnosis and to bring to the surface what seems to be Lucy's buried childhood memory. When she becomes adamant that her life is in grave danger, it's up to Dr. Delaware to find out if her fears are imagined or if a desperate killer wants to eliminate a witness to a 20-year-old murder.

Jonathan Kellerman It came in a plain brown wrapper, no return address: an audiocassette of a soul-lacerating scream, followed by an enigmatic, haunting message delivered in a childlike voice: "Bad love. Bad love. Don't give me the bad love." For psychologist-detective Dr. Alex Delaware, the chant, repeated over and over like a twisted nursery rhyme, is the first intimation that he is about to enter a living nightmare. If Alex fails to discover the escalating pattern of violence and to decipher the twisted logic of the stalker's mind games, he will be the next to die.

Jonathan Kellerman It's a story tailor-made for the nightly news: Dylan Meserve and Michaela Brand, young lovers and fellow acting students, vanish on the way home from a rehearsal. Three days later, the two of them are found in the remote mountains of Malibu, battered and terrified after a harrowing ordeal at the hands of a sadistic abductor. The details of the nightmarish event are shocking and brutal: The couple was carjacked at gunpoint by a masked assailant and subjected to a horrific regimen of confinement, starvation, and assault.

But before long, doubts arise about the couple's story, and as forensic details unfold, the abduction is exposed as a hoax. Charged as criminals themselves, the aspiring actors claim emotional problems, and the court orders psychological evaluation for both.

Michaela is examined by Alex Delaware, who finds that her claims of depression and stress ring true enough. But they don't explain her lies, and Alex is certain that there are hidden layers in this sordid psychodrama that even he hasn't been able to penetrate.

Nevertheless, the case is closed, only to be violently reopened when Michaela is savagely murdered. When the police look for Dylan, they find that he's gone. Is he the killer or a victim himself? Casting their dragnet into the murkiest corners of L.A., Delaware and Sturgis unearth more questions than answers, including a host of eerily identical killings. What really happened to the couple who cried wolf? And what bizarre and brutal epidemic is infecting the city with terror, madness, and sudden, twisted death?

Jonathan Kellerman Dr. Woodrow Moreland, a respected scientist, has invited Alex Delaware, psychologist/detective, to his home on a tiny Pacific island to help him organize his papers for publication. It's a light workload, leaving plenty of time for Alex and his girlfriend, Robin, to relax.Quickly, however, secretive houseguests and unexplained visitors dim the pleasures of deep blue water and white sands. Alex can't help wondering why Dr. Moreland really invited him to the island. When he probes, Alex discovers a sour and unwelcome truth. But truth it is, and its discovery comes just in time to save Alex and Robin from the violence that threatens them.

Jonathan Kellerman Tanya Bigelow was a solemn little girl when Dr. Alex Delaware successfully treated her obsessive-compulsive symptoms. Now, at 19, Patty Bigelow, Tanya's aunt and adoptive mother, has made a deathbed confession of murder and urged the young woman to seek Delaware's help. Armed with only the vaguest details, Delaware follows a trail twisting from L.A.'s sleaziest low-rent districts to its overblown mansions, retracing Patty and Tanya's nomadic and increasingly puzzling life. Then, a very real murder tears open a terrifying tunnel into the past, where secrets, and bodies, are buried.

Dramatic, action-packed, and filled with psychological detail that only Jonathan Kellerman can provide, Obsession is a whodunit, a whydunit, and something unique: a did-it-ever-happen. This is Kellerman at his heart-racing best.

Jonathan Kellerman In his 17 consecutive best selling novels, Jonathan Kellerman has distinguished himself as the master of the psychological thriller. Now, in Kellerman's most compelling and powerful novel yet, L.A. psychologist-detective Alex Delaware confronts a long-unsolved murder of unspeakable brutality - an ice-cold case whose resolution threatens his survival and that of longtime friend, homicide detective Milo Sturgis.The nightmare begins when Alex receives a strange package in the mail with no return address. Inside is an ornate album filled with gruesome crime-scene photos - a homicide scrapbook entitled The Murder Book. Alex can find no reason for anyone to send him this compendium of death, but when Milo views the book, he is immediately shaken by one of the images: a young woman, tortured, strangled, and dumped near a freeway ramp.

This was one of Milo's first cases as a rookie homicide cop: a vicious killing that he and his partner failed to solve because the department closed them down. Being forced to abandon the young victim tormented Milo. But his fears prevented him from pursuing the truth, and over the years he managed to forget.

Now someone has chosen to stir up the past. As Alex and Milo set out to uncover what really happened twenty years ago, their every move is being followed, and their lives are placed in jeopardy. While peeling back layer after layer of ugly secrets, they discover that the murder of one forgotten girl has chilling ramifications that extend far beyond the tragic loss of a single life.